Designing and Modelling of Trivalent Chimeric Vaccine for Capripoxvirus: Lumpy Skin Disease, Sheep Pox and Goat Pox by Immunoinformatics Approach

Abstract

Capripoxvirus belongs to poxviridae family and causes three economically important diseases in ruminants namely, lumpy skin disease (LSD) in cattle, sheeppox in sheep, and goatpox in goats. Albeit non-zoonotic in nature, they have potential to cause high economic loss among the farmers. Capripoxvirus members share common structural proteins and can rise cross-immunity among them. The present study aimed to design a recombinant chimeric-vaccine from immunogenic proteins of these three members to protect all the host species by using immunoinformatics analysis. The palmitoylated EEV (Extracellular Enveloped Virion) membrane glycoprotein of LSD virus, SPPV-ORF 117 of sheeppox virus, B5R (EEV host range protein) of goatpox virus, and a common protein to all the members, P32, were the major immunodominant proteins used in the present chimeric vaccine construction. Several computational tools were applied to define the most immunogenic regions and different possible adjuvants and universal T-helper agonists were linked to the new construct. The designed vaccine construct was examined for physicochemical properties, immunogenicity, 3D model, Docking analysis and Molecular Dynamics simulations, by using reliable software. After evaluation of the results, the final designed vaccine is expected to have potential in stimulating the humoral response in addition to the cellular responses with acceptable stability.